WSU distinguished visiting poet to give reading April 16

Author Michael Blumenthal will give a free public reading of his works at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 16, in WSU’s Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art. Blumenthal has been at WSU as a distinguished visiting poet in the English department since March 29, and will conclude his stay April 23.

Blumenthal is the author of five books of poetry: “Sympathetic Magic,” “Days We Would Rather Know,” “Laps,” “Against Romance” and “The Wages of Goodness.” He has written a novel, “Weinstock among the Dying,” and a collection of essays, “When History Enters the House: Essays from Central Europe,” which was published last year. He has edited an anthology of marriage poems, “To Woo and to Wed.”

Awards for his poetry include a Guggenheim, an Ingram-Merrill, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and the Lavan Younger Poets Prize. His novel won the Harold Ribelow Prize for fiction, judged by Elie Wiesel and Thomas Keneally.

For three years, he held the Senior Fulbright Lectureship in American Literature in Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary. He also has taught at Southwest Texas State, the University of Haifa, Boise State and Harvard University, where he was director of creative writing.